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The Cheat Sheet

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1. Federal agencies finally show up -- about five days late -- in New Orleans to begin a massive rescue and recovery effort. Bush administration officials get pretty defensive about the delayed response, whining that "this is not the time to point fingers." Sorry, but we beg to differ. This is exactly the right time. How else to keep such a tragedy from happening again? If a tornado or earthquake ever hits Memphis, do we really want the government sitting on its hands for a week?

2. Despite news reports that Memphis will have plenty of gasoline in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that doesn't stop panicky motorists from rushing to local stations, only to discover that many of them have run out of fuel. And the fuel that was available now costs more than $3 a gallon. Hmmm, where is that guy who said we could run our cars on cooking oil?

3. Ole Miss beats the University of Memphis 10-6 in the Liberty Bowl in a game broadcast on ESPN. If we were good sports, we'd say, "Congratulations, Rebels." But we're not. In fact, we're kind of peeved that they had to break the leg of starting quarterback Patrick Byrne (above) to do it.

4. Two Memphis police officers are indicted after investigators find they have changed a traffic ticket. Apparently the driver dropped some "big names" while he was being charged, so the police decided to ticket the other guy. What happened to the good old days, when you just slipped the cops 20 bucks?